Room for Dessert - Food Blog

As I’ve told you before, last Purim I’ve played the cookie game, on an Israeli food forum I’m a member of. There are many talented members on that forum, but one  of the most talented among them is Sivan, the girl who sent me the cookies on that game. The cookies were so great, that they barely lasted a week, and we’re talking lots of cookies here.

One of the cookies we loved most in that package were these alfajores, maybe the best I’ve ever eaten. Avi says I’m declaring that too often about food, but in this case, he definitely agreed with me.

For a few months now, a good friend I work with, told me about her cookie fobia. “No cookies I ever make turn out well”, she used to tell me. So a few weeks ago I invited her over for a cookie baking evening, to get rid of her fobia. And we made these awesome alfajores! The recipe was very accurate, as all Sivan’s recipes, and it allowed us to reach the same great cookies as the ones she sent me.

Do you also have a cookie or other pastry fobia? First of all, try these cookies. They are real easy to make and to get great results with. And second, remember that many times the reason of a failed dish is a not accurate enough recipe, or one that is lacking important information, and there’s also the reason of not following the recipe closely enough. The pastry world, as you probably know, requires a great deal of accuracy. So go ahead, give your fobia subject one more try, this time with a recipe from a reliable source, and try to follow it exactly as it’s written.

Some notes and tips about these cookies:

* This recipe calls for a mixer. Don’t have one? No worries, you can also do it manually. Use cold butter instead of softened one, and cut it into cubes. Place all the ingredients except the egg yolks and vanilla extract in a bowl, and crumble the mixture by rubbing it in your palms. The final mixture should be crumbly, and resemble to couscous crumbles, only a bit bigger. Then add in the yolks and the vanilla extract, and knead it only until a uniform dough is created.

* The secret of a good short crust is processing it as little as you can since the flour comes in contact with liquids, so make sure you pay attention to it.

* Not that much into dulce de leche? You can fill these cookies also with Nutella or with a chocolate spread or halva spread, and even with dates spread.

* If the spread you chose is too firm to work with, warm it for several seconds in the microwave.

Alfajores / Sivan
For about 25 alfajores

Ingredients:
150 gr butter, soft
100 gr powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
150 gr cornstarch
150 gr flour
5 gr baking powder
4 egg yolks

For filling and rolling:
A jar of dulce de leche
Coconut flakes

Directions:
1. Cream butter and powdered sugar in the mixer (no mixer? see tips), add in the yolks one be one and then the vanilla extract.
2. In a separate bowl, mix the cornstarch, flour and baing powder, and add them into the butter mixture. Process only until a dough is formed, and not longer than that. Chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
3. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
4. Roll the dough 0.5 cm thick, and cut cookies out of it using a glass or cookie cutters.
5. Bake for about 10 mins, or until the cookies just begin to change their color, but are still relatively light.
6. Pipe (or use teaspoonfulls) dulce de leche on top of one cookie, close it with a “clean” cookie and squeeze a bit, for the filling to show a little, so that it will easily stick to the coconut. Roll the cookies in coconut flakes.

How do you choose the recipe of the dish you mean to prepare?
For me it can be in one of three ways - either I see a wonderful dish on a food blog or forum, and I can’t help myself and make it immediately (immediately can take even 2 months..), or there’s such a buzz around a recipe on food blogs, that I add it to my to-do list straight away. And finally there’s me wanting to make a specific dish, and then I go looking for it on all the food blogs I trust. And what do all these 3 described ways have in common? Yes, you’re right - the reliable source! After all, no one, love to cook as they may, would like to face a situation where they went through all the trouble choosing a recipe, buy the ingredients, make it and then.. the disappointment.

Yossi, a good friend of mine, and a blogger himself, wrote a post in which he gave the readers some tips about how to save some money in the upcoming Holidays season (those of you who read Hebrew can read it here). My favorite tip was giving home made presents to your loved ones. Several people I know create their own presents to give away, and I really love this concept of more personal gifts.

Yossi’s idea was to give a cookie jar filled with home made cookies as a Holiday present to your loved ones. Now that’s my kind of present! Your friends are gonna receive a useful present - the cookie jar, and they also get a taste of home - your home! How cool is that? So of course I took the challenge of giving you ideas to fill your cookie jars with some delicious sweets. The first one is a classic recipe for Rosh HaShana - honey cookies. Avi and myself love them so much that we couldn’t resist waiting, and sneaked one of them to our mouth right as they came out of the oven. And how great these cookies are! With a slightly firm outside and a wonderfully chewy inside - their deep and spiced taste is simply wonderful.
Before making them, I was determined to also succeed in making the tasty icing of the original cookies, so I tried several versions for the icing - some of the cookies I rolled in powdered sugar before baking, some of them after baking. On top of some of the cookies I’ve spread some beaten egg-white, but the one that was the real deal was a topping very similar to a donuts topping, only a bit more liquid.

If honey isn’t your cup of tea, I have another recipe for you - these are the favorite cookies in our house. The classic honey is replaced with maple, so you can’t say that they’re completely unrelated to Rosh HaShana, and then there are the pecan nuts, that add that great crunchiness. You can find their recipe here.

Whichever present you decide to give your family and friends, I wish you all a very happy new year!

Some notes and tips about these honey cookies:

* Having hard time measuring honey cause it’s sticking to the measuring cup? Sprinkle a little vegetable oil into the cup and spread it evenly. Now place the honey in the measuring cup and watch it give in, and transfer it smoothly to its destination.

* Make sure to leave 4-5 cm space between the cookies when you arrange them on the baking sheet, as they almost double their size while baking.

* As I told you a few lines earlier, I’ve made a few versions of the icing for these cookies.  The best one, that tastes just like the original, is made with powdered sugar and milk. The good news about this icing is that you can fix it at any given time - is it too thick? Add a little more milk to the mixture. Too liquid? Add some more powdered sugar. I suggest beginning with 100 gr powdered sugar and 2.5 Tbsps of milk, and fix it according to taste.

Honey Cookies / Adapted from the shef at Lilith, an Israeli restaurant
For about 50 medium sized cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
5 gr baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger

For the icing:
100 gr powdered sugar
about 3 Tbsp milk (see tips)

Directions:
1. Place the honey in a sauce pan and warm it until the honey becomes liquid.
2. Add in, while stirring, oil, sugar and spices.
3. Add in the baking soda, while stirring. The batter will become a lot lighter in color, and the oil will seem to separate from the rest of the ingredients. Don’t worry, it’s ok, keep going. Cool the batter for about 20 mins.
4. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, and add them to the batter.
5. Gently fold the flour and baking powder into the batter, using a wooden spoon, until the batter is uniform.
6. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for an hour.
7. 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
8. Shape small balls out of the batter, and place them in the oven pan, lined with a baking sheet. Leave a 4-5 cm space between each 2 cookies.
9. Bake for 15 minutes, or until they raise nicely and get a nice shine. Keep a close eye on them cause their perfect texture is lost when overbaked.
10. Let the cookies cool for a while. Meanwhile prepare the icing by mixing the ingredients in a bowl.
11. Dip each cookie in the icing, and place back on the baking sheet, allow the icing to dry.
12. Place in a beautiful cookie jar, decorate it nicely and give away to your loved ones.

Even before publishing my previous post I’ve decided that this post is going to be dedicated to Rosh HaShana - the Jewish New Year’s Eve. After all, all of us (ok, let’s be honest, some of us) are looking for the best dessert recipe, one that will be a wonderful ending to the holiday dinner, and will make your guests ask for seconds. I thought really hard about an interesting dessert, one that will be a bit more exciting than the regular honey cake, classic as it may be, but I’m all for innovation. How about you?

It was really hard for me to make up my mind between two ideas I had - one of them was a Mille Feuille - adapted to Rosh HaShana using a honey pastry cream instead of the classic version. Man, this pastry cream was one of the worst things I’ve ever made. Really tried to like it. Honest. Impossible. Which led me to make my second idea - an apple and honey crumble.

The 45 minutes it spent in the oven, I spent on the other side, staring at it and hoping it will turn out fine. I even resisted the 10 minutes after it got out of the oven, letting it cool slightly. And then I attacked it with a teaspoon. What was supposed to be “merely a taste” turned into me eating like a fifth of the whole thing! Those apples, swimming peacefully in an exciting honey-maple-caramel and spiced up just right made me wonder how did I ever prefer the Mille Feuille in the first place. One note, though - as opposed to the classic crispy crumble texture, this one is somewhat softer, a fact that in my opinion only does good to this wonderful pastry. But if you want to be precise - you can call it apple-pastry-over-honey-caramel

Two other benefits for this dessert are that it’s quite light, so it’s a great finale to a big holiday dinner, and also it’s very easy to make, so it won’t take a lot of your time and attention while preparing the rest of the meal.

Some notes and tips about this dessert:

* Apples (and pears, for that matter) tend to change their color and get darker almost as soon as you peel them. For that reason, make sure you’re peeling them just before using them. If you still need to peel them a little earlier, put them in a bowl with 2 Tbsp of lemon juice, stir well, and it will keep them from changing their color.

* Coring the apples (and pears, for that matter) can be quite an unpleasant chore when you don’t have an apple corer. I thereby admit that I’m such a kitchen-gadgets kind of gal, but this one folks, I don’t consider a gadget at all. This is a very useful appliance, and even a must-have if you have to or choose to deal with apples and pears coring quite often.

* When using apples in baked desserts, it’s usually recommended to use the green tart apples - such as Granny Smiths. The reason for that is that their tartness blends wonderfully in sweet desserts (other sweet apples can cause your dessert to turn out too sweet), and also because they keep their shape very well during baking, and don’t get all mooshy.

* If you’re in the mood for a variation - you could substitute half or all the honey with maple syrup. If you’re doing so but are not such a great fan of sweetness, you can reduce the brown sugar added to the apples to 1 Tbsp instead of 2.

* When preparing this dessert in a 24 cm pan, it won’t slice that pretty, and its sliced look will be more rustic and scattered. If you’re looking for the more elegant look, go ahead and prepare it in individual ramekins.

Apples Over Honey-Caramel Pastry / Adapted from a Betty M. Crook recipe
For a 24 cm round pan

Ingredients:
4 Granny Smith big apples, peeled and cored
1/4 cup  honey (see tips for variations)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 tsp Vanilla
1 large egg

Directions:
1. Thinly slice the apples.
2. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
3. Place apples, honey, brown sugar, orange juice and spices in a bowl, and mix until blended.
4. In a separate bowl mix all the other ingredients, until a dough is formed.
5. Grease the pan. If you’re using a springform pan, wrap its bottom with a piece of aluminium foil, since the apple mixture is quite liquid, and we don’t want it to drip in the oven or on the floor.
6. Place the apple mixture in the pan and distribute them evenly (add also all the liquids).  Place the dough on top of the apples and make sure it’s arranged evenly - you can help it using your hands or a tablespoon.
7. Bake for 45 mins, or until the top is nicely browned.
8. The recommended serving is with a side of vanilla ice cream. Store it tightly wrapped at room temperature or in the fridge - the choice is yours.

These news are especially exciting for me, my dear friends.
Starting today, a new column that I’m writing will be published in the “City Mouse Online” - an Israeli entertainment magazine. The column will be on the food section of the site. Each post that I’m writing (in Hebrew) will be published there as a column. Those of you who can read Hebrew, are most welcome to read the first column.

Every Romanian family I know has their own best recipe for a summery and refreshing cherry cake. I think this cake was my favorite while growing up, and my Grandma used to make it just perfect. The problem is that all my Grandma’s recipes were lost when she passed away, long before I started showing interest in baking. For years I’ve been longing for this cake, and also made some tries to recreate it. What can you do, the taste (and smell, for that matter) sense has a very long memory, and thank God for that!

So after trying several recipes that were close but not the real deal, until this one. This one is not only the best recipe I’ve tasted yet for the classic Romanian cherry cake, but also a great base recipe for a simple pound cake. The original recipe is my aunt’s, Suzy, the woman that cooks the closest to how my Grandma used to, and sometimes even better (but don’t you tell anyone!). Oh, the happiness on my face the first moment I’ve tasted it… A stranger (= for that matter, a non-foodie) would never understand…

The original version of this cake, however, was a bit dense and lacked a bit of moist in my opinion, so I tweaked with it a little, replacing half of the butter with oil (an ingredient that gives a great moisture to cakes) and milk. Now I think the recipe is just perfect. The cake has a very rich flavor, due to the egg yolks it contains (continue reading in the tips section how you can use the egg whites) and also due to the lemon zest and juice, that contribute their great aroma to the cake.

Some notes and tips about this cake:

* In this kind of cakes we’re looking for them to be airy and moist. From the moment flour comes in contact with fluid, the mixing action causes a gluten net to evolve, this in turn, will cause our cake’s texture to be elastic. This is definitely a texture we are looking for in yeast cakes, but certainly not in this cake. So you need to pay attention and mix the batter as little as possible.

* When you move the batter into the pan, it will be very short. No worries, it doubles its height while baking.

* Instead of cherries you can use peaches, nectarines or apricots.

* If you want to use also the 4 egg whites that are left after preparing this cake, you can prepare a foam frosting: a little before the cake has finished baking, beat the egg whites with 4-5 Tbsp sugar (I used 4.5) until soft peaks. When the cake is ready, get it out of the oven, evenly spread the foam over it, and place back into the oven for about 8 more minutes, until the foam becomes golden.
If you don’t feel like foam-frosting your cake, you can freeze the egg whites for later use. Don’t forget to mark the number of whites you are freezing and the freezing date. You can use them later for making yummy financiers or cute little meringue kisses.

* If you’re in a miniature mood, you can also make this cake as muffins. The baking time will then be about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out with moist crumbs on it.

Cherry cake / Adapted from my aunt Suzy’s recipe
For a 20X25 cm pan

Ingredients:
100 gr butter, soft
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
juice + zest from one lemon
10 grams vanillated sugar (can be replaced with 1 tsp vanilla extract)
2 cups self raising flour
350 gr cherries, pitted

Directions:
1. If you’re using canned cherries, place them in a strainer for about 1/2 hour, until the liquid drains out of them.
2. Preheat your oven to 356F (180C).
3. In a bowl place butter, oil, milk, sugar, yolks, lemon and vanillated sugar. Mix well until a uniform mixture forms.
4. Gradually add in the flour, while mixing.
5. Grease the pan, scatter some sugar on its sides (to make the crust a bit crunchy) and move the batter into the pan. The batter will be quite low, don’t worry, it’s ok, it will rise while baking.
6. Spread the cherries evenly over the batter, you can give them a little push into the batter, using your fingers. Don’t worry, this cake is strong enoough to hold the fruit on its surface, and it won’t let them fall to the bottom.
7. Bake for about 45 mins, or until a wood toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out with moist crumbs on it.